Desperation

Last week was a pig. An absolute pig. My wife and I had a terrific bank holiday Monday, right up until we went to bed. And then we spoilt it by having a row- some nonsense about which one of us packed something at the supermarket, which one of us unpacked it, which one of us put it away, and where was it now? But it spiralled, got nastier, and spread over two days.
Normally, when my wife and I are at loggerheads like that, work compensates; that is, it eases off aggravating me. It’s not unknown, when things are fraught at home, for work to suddenly become fun again. Not this week.
This week, I’ve had every belligerent nutcase tearing a strip off me. Stand up rows with every second person.
In the middle of all that, I wrote and typed up a story for Microhorror. I simply didn’t know what else to do to make myself feel better. I’d been straining to come up with an idea for a story, researching the supernatural, reading a Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu here, an Algernon Blackwood there (with the express intention of stealing from them). And then when I did start writing, I used an old idea that had been kicking around for months.
It’s often like that for me. I can write an idea down, but it could be ages before I think of it again. I’ve got hundreds of these ideas kicking about, yet I can still believe I’ve got writers block. And that causes me to panic. Sometimes, though, I think that your unconscious has to work on an idea before it’s ready.
This particular idea I didn’t approach with any great enthusiasm. It was more a case of I had to write something, anything, so I seized on this one as the most suitable. It took two false starts before I finally settled into it. But somehow, miraculously, the juices started flowing and so did the words. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever written, it’s not even the best horror story I’ve ever written, but I think it will entertain a reader, and give him/her a pleasurable shudder. If Nathan Rosen, the editor of Microhorror, likes it, it’s his.